dream cave
by princess estellise
Summary: He is tired of receiving gifts. - Zelos-centric; some ZelosColette.


**DREAM CAVE**

Set ambiguously between receiving the Cruxis Crystal from Seles and returning to the Tower of Salvation. Zelette if you squint.

Content warning: suicidal ideation.

— & —

Today, he opens presents.

Zelos, sagged over the table, holds his cheek in his palm like an apple. He pinches the forked end of a ribbon and pulls, the bow shrinking then unravelling completely. Once, Lloyd told him he'd pulled a fistful of flowers from his father's garden, and when he held them up their roots hung there with a clump of mud, all twisted and brown. A dead thing, Zelos thought. But Lloyd said the clump reminded him of a brownie.

The deflated ribbon doesn't remind Zelos of a brownie, but it is sort of metallic like a fly's exoskeleton; and flies are attracted to both brownies and dead things.

It seems, after all, that everything is connected: stem and root; fly and ribbon; world and world.

Zelos uncaps the box and removes from it a fine vase and a short note. _Chosen_, it reads. _Please accept this handcrafted vase as a token of my devotion. I think fresh gardenias would look beautiful in it. _

_Yours —_

— & —

In a dream, Zelos faces his reflection and whimpers. Teal scales honeycomb his neck and part of his face. He tries to wipe them off. He uses both hands; scales scab the backs of them and his knuckles. He curls his fingers and peels his cheek, a row of scales spiraling out. His tongue slithers out forked — so he feeds them to himself. With his molars, he crushes them like petals.

He wakes with the taste of dust heavy in his mouth.

— & —

Teach him how to say, "Does it hurt, my little angel?" in the language of good men.

First definition: Be quiet, you idiot. Sit cross-legged on the floor and stay perfectly still. Become a lizard watching something bigger than it.

Second definition: _How can I help? Should I: a. tell the truth and beg; b. kill myself; c. undress you slowly, kiss your shoulders, run you a hot bath?_

Third: Take her to Flanoir and show her the ice sculptures. Smash them with a chakram and sword. Show her how it feels to hurt other things.

Fourth: _You look gorgeous, Gorgeous_.

Fifth: For once in your miserable, goddamned life — say thank you.

Colette blinks at him. She folds her hands together over her chest and wonders, nervously laughing, "Does what hurt?"

— & —

Let him explain.

His collarbone is a sharpening stone. Blood orange shards of glass. There is a place on his mother's portrait frame where the gold has flaked. The new maid cleans and folds his laundry well. There is no difference between the smell a woman leaves in his bed and the smell a half-elf woman leaves in his bed. He is tired of receiving gifts. Inhale. Gardenias mean longing. He wonders what his sister thinks about as she overlooks the ocean from the abbey. Tuna, snapper, melons. He likes warm things and the way women blush. Blood cools on his sword long before he cleans it. Today, he thinks briefly about drowning himself in the Meltokio sewer. And he is sorry for the way his clothes smell when he comes home late.

— & —

The mansion feels small when filled with people and Sebastian seems happier with living things to take care of. His muted humming seeps into the dining room as he wipes a palm print from the closed, glass door that separates it from the front of the house.

"Lloyd," Zelos says, watching his butler through a clear pane. "I want to tell you the truth."

"The truth?" Lloyd repeats. "About what?"

"Mm..." Zelos murmurs, then deflects: "Y'know? I'm not sure if you can handle it."

Zelos stands from the table and pushes in his chair, a bright strand of hair caught like a wound between his rib and arm. Lloyd stands, too. A portrait of some distant relative watches them severely from the wall.

"Try me," Lloyd says, and meets his eye.

Zelos considers some truths: Yes, he betrayed you. He hates the smell of blood. He fingered Princess Hilda at her last birthday party, under the table, while the king gave a toast. Octopus is chewy, like rubber or his tongue. He's glad Colette is suffering instead of him.

"Sebastian knows your name's Lloyd," Zelos finally says. "I just told him to keep calling you 'Sir Bud' because it's funny."

"Zelos!" Lloyd complains. He closes his fists and shakes his head.

If he had to choose, Zelos would exist always at dusk.

— & —

Zelos orders gardenias for the vase and sets the vase near a window. A fly lands on a milky petal and dubiously rubs together its hands.

— & —

(A recurring dream: a woman on her hands and knees, weeping as she scrubs the floor. Zelos standing over her and silvered by moonlight. _Master Zelos_, the maid cries, _the stain — the stain won't come out of the floor —_ Her soapy water gurgles and turns carnation pink, then Valentine red, then so red it's almost black. And gleaming. This dream is the only place Zelos is quiet, but not through lack of trying, his ribs lodged with stone-sized pieces of his voice. The maid lifts her chin and he recognizes her face. _Please, Zelos_. A tar-like substance sludges her lip and chin. Zelos struggles to speak. And the maid collapses into her blood. Zelos sinks to his knees and touches his mother's elbow, his shadow seeping into the marble.

A silhouette doesn't stain: just extracts color, its gloss.)

— & —

Today, Zelos catches Colette admiring a gift's wrapping paper: matte cream, topped with a snapper-red bow. He sprawls in the doorway, cattish and leaning, a shoulder flattened against the frame.

He startles her from behind. "Help yourself, my cute Colette."

When she pirouettes, facing him, Zelos is smirking. He tilts his chin to look down the lithe curve of his body; admires briefly his bare arm.

"Oh, no, I couldn't," Colette says.

"Nonsense." Zelos pushes off of the wall and comes to stand beside her, sliding the present to the edge of the table. "We Chosens are together in this, right? Might as well get something out of it."

"Um," Colette hedges. "Y-yeah."

He watches her open the gift, following the gape of her sleeve with his eyes, and is struck for the first time with humility, or shame: a desire to cover himself. Zelos crosses his arm over his stomach and holds his elbow. The skin, dry.

"It's — ?" Colette bites her bottom lip, holding an antique hairbrush in both hands.

Flowers are painted on the flat backside. Dead things, Zelos thinks.

— & —

The night before leaving, Zelos tells the maid to wash all the sheets in their absence. He tells her to wash those in Colette's room twice; imagines teal scales flaked in the crisp white, crushed into glitter and quartz.

He asks the chef to make brownies for Lloyd.

Then, for a while, Zelos stays so still and quiet that a fly lands on the back of his hand. He watches it suckle his clean skin.

Sebastian waters the gardenias, which have yet to show any kind of wilting.

And in the early morning's grey, Colette appears outside his room, and thanks him again for his gift.

Zelos asks for her blessing to brush her hair.


End file.
